Saturday, November 20, 2010

I bought 8 yds of heavy upholstery fabric in August, at The Fabric Warehouse for $16.00. It was on the clearance table for $4.oo/yd plus 50% off. I've sewn lots of home dec projects, however this was the first time I sewed with this type of fabric. I bought the fabric because of the mutted colors of red, green, blue and gold; also it has an etnic look.The project took 4-5 hours to complete. My first attempt was a disaster. The side seams were wavy and it did not hang right.Here are the steps to make a simple window covering:1. Cut the desired length of fabric- include hems and header2. Fold the fabric length wise, the selvages may or may not meet. The goal here is for the fabric to hang straight. See belowAs you can see the selvages did not line up.3. Pin the selvages. I used a yard stick, chalk pen, rotary mat and a rotary cutter. Use a line on the rotary mat and drarw a straight line with the chalk across the selvage. Cut the selvages. You could remove 1-3 inches or more from the side.See below4. Once the fabric was straighten, I proceeded to straighten the top and bottom, using the lines on the rotary mat, the yardstick etc.5 I serged the sides, the top and the bottom.6. The sides were turned under 1-inch. Here I had to tweak the sides a little, I removed 1/2-2 additional inches from the side because it was not straight.7. The top header was hemmed 3-inches and the bottom was given a 1-inch hem.This was straight stitching, nothing fancy. The side panels are twin sheets I bought in Walmart 3-years ago for $3.00 per sheet.

Friday, November 12, 2010

In my previous post you saw that the muslin only needed tweaking. I made muslin #5, in a dark grey fabric. I relay on photos to fit myself in the back and the gray fabric made it easier for me to see what exactly what correction I needed to make. The pink muslin was fine; it only needed a bit of tweaking. I sewed this muslin following the Bishop's method. The results was a better fitting muslin. The grey muslin was hand basted and that made a difference in the overall fit and looks of the muslin.

The following are notes from this process:1.I moved the zipper from the side seam to the center back seam. The pattern instructions called for the zipper to be inserted into the side seam. I am working with two muslins, one has the zipper in the side seam and the second muslin has the zipper in the center back seam.

2.I did not compare the center back length and center front length measurements of the pattern to my CB and CF length measurements. After comparing the measurements, the CB was length by 3’’to the CF was length by 2”. A swayback adjustment was done in the early stages of fitting the pattern. The addition of length to the CB and CF improved the fit of the muslin. A swayback adjustment was done in the early stages and once the CB and CF were corrected the fit in the back was better. Also the CB of curved and fits my swayback.

3. I decreased the length of the back dart by one-inch and did the same in the front.

4. There was gaposis in the front neckline. ½” was removed; once the zipper was removed from the side seam and inserted into CB; this lead to the removal of an additional ½” from the neckline.

5. Next: Sewing the pattern out of a fashion fabric. This is work in progress, my ultimate goal is for this pattern to become a TNT.

This was a journey that started when I took a fitting class in October 2000. In this class I learned how to do alterations to a basic dress. That my introduction to fitting and altering a pattern. Fast forward to 2007, I enrolled in a fashion design class at the community college. The first class was learning to draft a dress sloper with long sleeves. The skirt was drafted first. That was very easy. Because most of the class did not know how to use a sewing machine, a simple skirt became a time consuming process. Towards the end of the semester the teacher rushed through the bodice sloper and it was a disaster....I became so frustrated that I refused to enroll in any more classes.

Do you know what made the difference and why I was able to finally fit this blouse/dress sloper? It is you guys. I learned from all the blogs I read. I bought books based on a blogger's suggestion ( The Bishop Method of Sewing, Adele Margolis). I watched sewing videos, I read Threads Magazines articles including the last series of fitting articles done by Kenneth King etc. The fact is that you guys in sewing blog world are the best. To all of you who took the time to post detailed instruction on your blogs and gave tips how to accomplish a sewing task, Thank You so very much

Lastly, the sloper is not perfect, and it will improve as I work with it.

Friday, November 5, 2010

This is what I have been working on. I pretty happy with this muslin so far. I made a total of 3-muslin. I still have to tweak it some more. I am not going to over fit. See the pics below, your comments will be greatly appreciated. My plan is to work on this muslin and get the fit right, so that I can have a basic TNT pattern to work with.